<div dir="ltr"><div>Dear Jochen et al,</div><div><br></div>...thanks,<div>but it is 100% incorrect that Google Earth made satellite data available, and/or for free, e.g. Landsat.<div>The opposite is the case (Landsat was made open by the Clinton administration etc much before that, by law. It's widely paid by US tax money btw) ; </div><div>so Google Earth just used a nice and shiny PUBLIC image set and copyrighted it, value-added as a map background; more or less.</div><div>There are no 8 bands in the Google Earth Landsat set to use; just a flat image file!</div><div>What's the progress other than the hype and them selling public stuff and making it hard for GIS users etc ?</div><div>Who owns the space, the satellites ? <br><div><br></div></div><div>It's also incorrect to call Google Earth and its format a GIS; Google Earth is just a visualizing tool, kmz is pretty awful for any serious GIS work and database work (just like shapefiles are, even worse in Geodatabases; all commercial btw</div><div>and based on dBASE style).</div><div><br></div><div>OpenStreetMaps cannot copyright words, as a product (an Open Street Map that is, public common words found in any dictionary).</div><div>Apple does not own apples neither, nor snow leopards.</div><div><br></div><div>If somebody occupies, measures and uses public spaces, and then gets 'the best' (hi res) data on the market, e.g. for roads,</div><div>that's clearly a monopoly, and should be treated as such, and with ethics.</div><div>It has many many implications in capitalism and worse, e.g.</div><div><a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.en.html">https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-copyleft.en.html</a> <br></div><div><br></div><div>So the easier, and the better a format is described, the better for everybody to use (if that's the purpose).</div><div>ISO comes to play, or VM, GNU etc .</div><div><br></div><div>We have seen very bad things last 40 years in the GIS world, and it's little progress.</div><div>Certainly true for the EU and the German Katasteraemter, or EU Remote Sensing or EU science (see Max Planck Institutes etc, Fisheries data, cancer data).<br>What they call open access usually is not, and very clumsy at best; widely underachieving for decades.</div><div><br></div><div>It is very important here to understand and perceive those things correctly, because </div><div>otherwise we end up with more private and commercial intrusions.</div><div>Bad impacts can be seen world-wide already, all the time.</div><div>GARMIN is among them; just see COVID examples.</div><div><br></div><div>QGIS is a shining example and outlier, beyond R (not a GIS btw).</div><div><br>Any public librarian can tell you their stories about it (and consider many libraries being short-handed most times, hardly afloat for money).</div><div><br></div><div>It's a very important subject, Just think of use of hi res data for drones, the decaying public good, global society etc</div><div>An example here: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone</a> <br></div><div><br></div><div>That's my experience on the topic and why I shared it here in some detail; thanks.</div><div><br></div><div>Keep me posted please; very best</div><div> Falk Huettmann PhD, Professor</div><div> University of Alaska Fairbanks</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 12:28 PM <<a href="mailto:j.huber@post-ist-da.de">j.huber@post-ist-da.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>Hi,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>while I agree that there are lots of
bad examples of proprietary formats, I want to say a few words to
some of your examples:</div>
<div>It is true that OpenStreetMap data is
difficult to handle - this is not because it is closed, but
because it is open. When the project was started the goal was to
make it as easy as possible for people to contribute to the
dataset. Thus there are few restrictions which makes it difficult
to render or process the data. But the alternative would probably
have been to discuss the data format for years instead of building
an amazing open dataset...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>While Garmin makes it difficult to
upload custom maps to their units as Nicolas wrote, many of their
devices can be accessed as a USB drive and waypoint/track data can
simply be copied as .GPX-files. I have seen many devices needing
special software to transfer data, so this is actually easy.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>When Google Earth first came to be, it
was amazing - access to satellite or aerial imagery had been
expensive and difficult before. So I don't have a problem with the
fact that Google didn't make the data available for everyone to
use (probably license restrictions prohibit this).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Text files aren't often that simple -
there are different encodings for example which aren't advertised
in the files, so you often have to guess to get special characters
right. They have no inbuilt validity checks, so errors can not be
easily recognised. In most use cases, structured (XML) formats are
preferable. And especially for large datasets, you get much better
performance and functionality using other formats like Geopackage.
The point in my opinion is that a format is open and well
documented.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Of course it is great if geodata is
available to the public. In the EU, there has been a lot of
movement in the last years with more and more data becoming
available under open licenses, let's hope this continues.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Regards,</div>
<div>Jochen<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Am 25.05.20 um 20:55 schrieb Falk
Huettmann:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Dear Chris et al,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
...by using certain specific/clumsy formats -poorly documented
ones - you can virtually exclude
<div>people from data and from Remote Sensing data and GPS etc.</div>
<div>Google Earth as a classic example, and GARMIN as another,
or ESRI files, certainly NetCDF or many R packages even.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In reality, you will see that all what is shiny and new -
in demand- is to be sold, and usually not well publically
shared.</div>
<div>It takes many steps to get around it, if even that.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>While I have used OpenStreet maps, it was very clumsy; more
bad examples exist, e.g. lack of metadata.</div>
<div>Whatever companies tell ya, they want to sell more stuff
(sell PR, or might face bankruptcy otherwise).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>And it is my hope that with QGIS we get to open access and
open source,</div>
<div>of these data, and any other.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>My format of choice is plain and simple ASCII text files
for those reasons, perhaps using the </div>
<div>Virtual Machine as a platform forever (well, as long as
that is reasonable, but not commercially driven).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Keep me posted please; very best & thanks</div>
<div> Falk Huettmann</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, May 25, 2020 at 10:19
AM chris hermansen <<a href="mailto:clhermansen@gmail.com" target="_blank">clhermansen@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">Falk and list;<br>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, May 25, 2020 at
10:48 AM Falk Huettmann <<a href="mailto:fhuettmann@alaska.edu" target="_blank">fhuettmann@alaska.edu</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr">Dear List,
<div>I think these GPS high resolution suggestions are
great; </div>
<div>thanks.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>But my real interest/question here is, how can we
bring it home to QGIS ?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I see GARMIN essentially trying to sell and
impose on us their GIS system,</div>
<div>same applies to OpenStreet Maps etc etc. So they
try to privatize geography and public space and
information, </div>
<div>which I am mostly opposed to.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>How is OpenStreetMap (I assume when you say
"OpenStreet Maps" you mean "OpenStreetMap") trying "to
privatize geography and public space and information"?
Not trying to start an argument here; this just seems
completely contrary to what I know of OpenStreetMap,
whose data is licensed under <a href="https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/" target="_blank">https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Instead, I wonder how we can use QGIS and release
the commercial</div>
<div>data into Open Source and public use ?</div>
<div>That's for HIGH RESOLUTION data discussed here.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks for such questions and solutions.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>[stuff deleted] <br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">Chris Hermansen · clhermansen "at" gmail
"dot" com<br>
<br>
C'est ma façon de parler.</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
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